Uhmmm... Stay away from DVDs if you want to(I won't)), but don't look to closley at VCDs. First of all flipping isn't very fun, but futhermore this format suffers from its low bitrate. Scenes with little movement are OK, at least better than VCR, but lots of movement == BAD. I saw Deep blue sea on VCD, and the propeller in the airplane scene looked just... AWFULL. Like an old AVI. This is pretty much unavoidable, there is a reason DVDs use so much higher bitrate.
What he (probably) means is that he only has Linux boxen in his house, and hence he cant play DVD:s. By not supporting Linux, they are hence loosing a customer. By following up on the DeCSS lawsuit they are making it all but impossible to EVER have a state-of-the-art DVD-player under Linux, since it would have to be an illegal underground product.
The alternative for all Linux longhairs is obviously to get a standalone player. This has drawbacks like no VGA out, no screenshots, etc. but also advantages like the possibility of having a DVD-changer (Sony has a DVD-player that can store up to 200 DVDs and CDs), easier remote navigation etc.
They ARE loosing customers this way, maybe a couple of PPM of their customer base. But they are obviously prepared to loose those customers to fight piracy. Not that the decryption program really makes it that much easier to pirate discs - they could previously be bit-copied. The only difference, as far as I can tell, is that now pirates can release region free versions, or edit the movie (remove copyrights notice, insert bonus material, etc). Like we coulnt disable region control anyway. Duh.
Pleas note the use ot the ":)" smiley at the end of the original post. Also consider the rather light, almost humorous tone of the entire post, including the reference to Linux programmers as "Longhairs" and the reference to Windows as having a user interface.
These are two strong signs that the author may be using some form of irony. Irony, for those not familiar with the concept, can be described as "when the actual opinion is the opposite of that stated". Ironys are in other words obvious lies, and are used as a way of stating the obvious in a humorous manner. (Do you understand the concept humour?)
In other words: Your post is redundant. One can then use induction, combined with the first law of moderation conclude that this post is also redundant.
There is a product from 3com called the "Gaming modem", (http://www.3com.com/client/pcd/products/prod-game mod5613-int.html) that is supposed to lower the ping. The homepage doesn't say anything interesting about the product (Why are almost all corporate homepages so uninformative?), but I remember reading a review claiming it was actually mostly a driverside improvement. Could this be done for all modems? Would it matter, or is this whole "Internet"-thing just a part of the Y2K-hype?
Oh, come on! Why is everybody hailing this as a good thing?
Just because it's Microsoft doesn't mean it should be BANNED! What ever happened to free speach? Free speach means that one should be allowed to make the wrong choice as well.
If Linux will be big in China, then that's a good thing (tm), but not if people are forced to use it. Knowing human nature, that would probably lead to a W2K underground movement of people writing "IIS ROCKS" in grafitti, and secretly mailing Microsoft money... That would be fun.
1: Obviously false, since no compression scheme can compress arbitrary input. If such a scheme existed, one could just use this scheme infinite times, and thus compress anything by an arbitrary amount. Losless compression finds patterns in the indata and exploits these, wavelets are fourier transforms, and as such converge to the original image only at infinite filesize. There IS a lossless compression-scheme in J2000 as well, but it doesn't use wavelets.
2: dunno
3: Wavelets are just cool weight-functions on a regular fourier transform. Weight-functions are often used on General Fourier transforms (using Bessel-functions or such as the base) to make the base functions orthogonal. The nice thing with wavelets is that the 8X8 grids seen in low quality JPEG are gone. low quality compression is just a bit blurry, but never blocky. Since we're still using fourier transforms with wavelets, FFT still works, and we get the n * log(n) performance, and hence the performance compared to JPEG will only be lowered by a constant factor. Not even a large one at that.
Sorry if this post is a bit mathematical, but most people here have probably studied differential calculus, so you should know what I'm talking about.
I find it strange that the DVD consortium are taking such extreme meassures against DeCSS. I mean, step back and look at the big picture:
No copyprotection on a widespread media has EVER lasted for long. Remomber the Copy2PC option board, that could copy the copy-protected PC-games? How many DAT-stations have the copy protection enabled? How hard is it to rip a CD? I am not embracing this tradition, but these are plain facts. All a copy protection can do is slow down pirating, not halt it.
There is nothing usefull to do with the darned program! HOW are you going to fing 5 GB of random access storage that cost less than the 20 dollar DVD you just ripped? Yes, this WILL come, but not for another year or two year. So DeCSS is meaningless today. And when it comes, it won't come in easy to swallow capsules. Only hackers need apply.
Did they really think they where safe? That they could win? That reverse engienering CSS whould be more difficult than rewriting UNIX. There is a word for that. Hybris.
Corporations did NOT create the Internet, nor do they sponsor independent sites in ANY way. We have absolutley NOTHING to thank them for.
Search engines are a public service, provided free of charge. To force them to display corporate information first would be just like forcing you to state on your homepage that you prefer MacDonalds over home made burgers.
It is possible that Leonardo finance looses money because people can't find their site, just like pioneer electronics loose money to pioneer farming equipment because they own http://www.pioneer.com but that is beside the point. The name Leonardo is a very common one. If they were concerned with people mistaking names, they should have chosen a differen one to begin with. Ever heard of prior arts?
I have seen a great deal of people complain about the louse quality of MP3:s, whithout considering the cause of this bad sound quality. Most soundcards claim to hava a signal to noise ratio of about 90 dB, the CL live! even claims something like 140 dB (Not 100% sure about this, but way above 100).
In a test this in the swedish magazine Mikrodatorn this spring (sorry, no link AFAIK), a whole batch of cards where tested (even including a pricey Turtle-Beach card), and all cards scored 50-60 dB, except for the live!, that scored somewhere above 70 dB.
A s/n ratio of X dB can be explained like this: The strongest sound that can be produced is X dB loader than the unwanted noise. So if we set the noise to 0 (remember logarthims, this doesn't mean no noise...), the loudest sound we can play is X dB. If my memory serves me correctly (not always the case, please feel free to correct me on this one) 50 dB is something like a quiet street, 70 dB more like a load conversation.
A signal to noise ratio of 50 dB means that the noise will be noticable even when listening at rather low volumes, and is simply unaceptable. 70 dB is a pretty decent score, but not a good one by far.
This means that people are probably mostly judging the quality of their soundcards, NOT of the codec. Personally, I bought a live! value, and a Hoontech (possible misspelling!!!) daugterboard, used the Hoontech's optical out, and plugged it in to my MiniDisc player, which has a pretty good D/A converter. This is not the simplest/most elegent solution, but it works...
The reason why this should sound better is that there aren't as many EM-fields as inside of a computer case, an EM-fields are a NIGHTMARE when dealing with D/A convertion.
If anyone has more test data of s/n ratio of modern soundcards, please post them, I know that the article I am referring to is unavailable to most, not to metion rather old. More data on the subject would be nice.
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Uhmmm... Stay away from DVDs if you want to(I won't)), but don't look to closley at VCDs. First of all flipping isn't very fun, but futhermore this format suffers from its low bitrate. Scenes with little movement are OK, at least better than VCR, but lots of movement == BAD. I saw Deep blue sea on VCD, and the propeller in the airplane scene looked just... AWFULL. Like an old AVI. This is pretty much unavoidable, there is a reason DVDs use so much higher bitrate.
What he (probably) means is that he only has Linux boxen in his house, and hence he cant play DVD:s. By not supporting Linux, they are hence loosing a customer. By following up on the DeCSS lawsuit they are making it all but impossible to EVER have a state-of-the-art DVD-player under Linux, since it would have to be an illegal underground product.
The alternative for all Linux longhairs is obviously to get a standalone player. This has drawbacks like no VGA out, no screenshots, etc. but also advantages like the possibility of having a DVD-changer (Sony has a DVD-player that can store up to 200 DVDs and CDs), easier remote navigation etc.
They ARE loosing customers this way, maybe a couple of PPM of their customer base. But they are obviously prepared to loose those customers to fight piracy. Not that the decryption program really makes it that much easier to pirate discs - they could previously be bit-copied. The only difference, as far as I can tell, is that now pirates can release region free versions, or edit the movie (remove copyrights notice, insert bonus material, etc). Like we coulnt disable region control anyway. Duh.
Pleas note the use ot the ":)" smiley at the end of the original post. Also consider the rather light, almost humorous tone of the entire post, including the reference to Linux programmers as "Longhairs" and the reference to Windows as having a user interface.
These are two strong signs that the author may be using some form of irony. Irony, for those not familiar with the concept, can be described as "when the actual opinion is the opposite of that stated". Ironys are in other words obvious lies, and are used as a way of stating the obvious in a humorous manner. (Do you understand the concept humour?)
In other words: Your post is redundant. One can then use induction, combined with the first law of moderation conclude that this post is also redundant.
There is a product from 3com called the "Gaming modem", (http://www.3com.com/client/pcd/products/prod-game mod5613-int.html) that is supposed to lower the ping. The homepage doesn't say anything interesting about the product (Why are almost all corporate homepages so uninformative?), but I remember reading a review claiming it was actually mostly a driverside improvement. Could this be done for all modems? Would it matter, or is this whole "Internet"-thing just a part of the Y2K-hype?
---
Oh, come on! Why is everybody hailing this as a good thing?
Just because it's Microsoft doesn't mean it should be BANNED! What ever happened to free speach? Free speach means that one should be allowed to make the wrong choice as well.
If Linux will be big in China, then that's a good thing (tm), but not if people are forced to use it. Knowing human nature, that would probably lead to a W2K underground movement of people writing "IIS ROCKS" in grafitti, and secretly mailing Microsoft money... That would be fun.
---
1: Obviously false, since no compression scheme can compress arbitrary input. If such a scheme existed, one could just use this scheme infinite times, and thus compress anything by an arbitrary amount. Losless compression finds patterns in the indata and exploits these, wavelets are fourier transforms, and as such converge to the original image only at infinite filesize. There IS a lossless compression-scheme in J2000 as well, but it doesn't use wavelets.
2: dunno
3: Wavelets are just cool weight-functions on a regular fourier transform. Weight-functions are often used on General Fourier transforms (using Bessel-functions or such as the base) to make the base functions orthogonal. The nice thing with wavelets is that the 8X8 grids seen in low quality JPEG are gone. low quality compression is just a bit blurry, but never blocky.
Since we're still using fourier transforms with wavelets, FFT still works, and we get the n * log(n) performance, and hence the performance compared to JPEG will only be lowered by a constant factor. Not even a large one at that.
Sorry if this post is a bit mathematical, but most people here have probably studied differential calculus, so you should know what I'm talking about.
I find it strange that the DVD consortium are taking such extreme meassures against DeCSS. I mean, step back and look at the big picture:
No copyprotection on a widespread media has EVER lasted for long. Remomber the Copy2PC option board, that could copy the copy-protected PC-games? How many DAT-stations have the copy protection enabled? How hard is it to rip a CD? I am not embracing this tradition, but these are plain facts. All a copy protection can do is slow down pirating, not halt it.
There is nothing usefull to do with the darned program! HOW are you going to fing 5 GB of random access storage that cost less than the 20 dollar DVD you just ripped? Yes, this WILL come, but not for another year or two year. So DeCSS is meaningless today. And when it comes, it won't come in easy to swallow capsules. Only hackers need apply.
Did they really think they where safe? That they could win? That reverse engienering CSS whould be more difficult than rewriting UNIX. There is a word for that. Hybris.
Corporations did NOT create the Internet, nor do they sponsor independent sites in ANY way. We have absolutley NOTHING to thank them for.
Search engines are a public service, provided free of charge. To force them to display corporate information first would be just like forcing you to state on your homepage that you prefer MacDonalds over home made burgers.
It is possible that Leonardo finance looses money because people can't find their site, just like pioneer electronics loose money to pioneer farming equipment because they own http://www.pioneer.com but that is beside the point. The name Leonardo is a very common one. If they were concerned with people mistaking names, they should have chosen a differen one to begin with. Ever heard of prior arts?
In a test this in the swedish magazine Mikrodatorn this spring (sorry, no link AFAIK), a whole batch of cards where tested (even including a pricey Turtle-Beach card), and all cards scored 50-60 dB, except for the live!, that scored somewhere above 70 dB.
A s/n ratio of X dB can be explained like this: The strongest sound that can be produced is X dB loader than the unwanted noise. So if we set the noise to 0 (remember logarthims, this doesn't mean no noise...), the loudest sound we can play is X dB. If my memory serves me correctly (not always the case, please feel free to correct me on this one) 50 dB is something like a quiet street, 70 dB more like a load conversation.
A signal to noise ratio of 50 dB means that the noise will be noticable even when listening at rather low volumes, and is simply unaceptable. 70 dB is a pretty decent score, but not a good one by far.
This means that people are probably mostly judging the quality of their soundcards, NOT of the codec. Personally, I bought a live! value, and a Hoontech (possible misspelling!!!) daugterboard, used the Hoontech's optical out, and plugged it in to my MiniDisc player, which has a pretty good D/A converter. This is not the simplest/most elegent solution, but it works...
The reason why this should sound better is that there aren't as many EM-fields as inside of a computer case, an EM-fields are a NIGHTMARE when dealing with D/A convertion.
If anyone has more test data of s/n ratio of modern soundcards, please post them, I know that the article I am referring to is unavailable to most, not to metion rather old. More data on the subject would be nice.